The Black Castellana breed is a Spanish indigenous breed of laying hens recorded both in the Official Catalogue of Livestock Breeds of the Ministry of Agriculture of Spain and in FAO’s Domestic Animal Diversity Information System (DAD-IS). GANECA is the breeders association of this breed.

The Black Castellana hen features black plumage with metallic sheen, white earlobes and slate shanks. It is a light hen, so it lays white eggs.

The Black Castellana is a very old Mediterranean breed, from which other world-renowned chicken breeds have originated, such as the Minorca and Spanish White-Faced breeds. In the treatises on animal husbandry and poultry science of the nineteenth century and first third of the twentieth century, the Black Castellana breed was deemed as a breed with high egg-laying performance. Nevertheless, this breed was later displaced in intensive farms by the strains of high-yielding laying hens obtained after decades of genetic selection. 

Nowadays, there is a growing awareness about the importance of preserving the local animal genetic resources of each country because of their hardiness, their good adaptation to the environmental conditions of the area they have inhabited for centuries, their importance as a reservoir of wide allelic variability, etc… In this sense, Target 2.5 of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations encourages the preservation of the genetic diversity of farm animals. The Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources (FAO, 2007) emphasises that, in order to characterise and preserve an indigenous livestock breed, it is essential to measure the productive performance of these animals. The obtainment of these production data can lead to evidence revealing that food originating from these breeds is of high organoleptic quality. Most indigenous livestock breeds are currently threatened of extinction because they cannot compete in quantitative terms with genetically improved animals. Nonetheless, many success stories in the conservation and in the increase of the population size of the indigenous breeds have been based on the well-groundeddissemination of the high organoleptic and nutritional quality of the products generated by these animals and on having achieved widespread recognition of this quality by consumers. Outstanding examples of the latter in Spain are the Iberian pig and the Avileña-Negra Ibérica cattle. Numerous cases of Spanish indigenous livestock breedslinked to food products granted a Protected Designation of Origin (Queso Ibores, Quesode la Serena) or a Protected Geographical Indication (Sobrasada de Mallorca de CerdoNegro) can also be cited.

The first exhaustive characterisation of the quality of eggs produced by the Black Castellana breed has been recently published in the international journal Poultry Science. As compared with eggs from a strain of selected light layers, eggs laid by Black Castellana hens stand out mainly for the following aspects of commercial and nutritional interest:

• Heavier eggs
• Higher percentage of protein in the yolk
• Lower percentage of fat in the yolk and healthier lipid profile (lower proportion of saturated fatty acids and, instead, higher proportions of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids)
• Greater content of vitamin D in the yolk 

In this study, it has also been scientifically demonstrated that, just like it happens with selected layers, Black Castellana hens are capable of laying eggs enriched in omega-3 fatty acids when they are fed a diet containing linseed.

Therefore, this publication provides breeders of Black Castellana hens with evidence that supports the quality of the eggs produced by this indigenous breed.

Carlos Romero and José Luis Yustos 

Further information: 

https://ganeca.org

Romero C., Yustos J.L., Sánchez-Román I., López-Torres M., Chamorro S. 2024. Assessment of performance and egg quality in laying hens of Spanish indigenous breed Black Castellana as compared with a selected white egg-layer strain. Poultry Science 103, 104096